July 30, 2024By Evan Tuchinsky
HAMILTON CITY — Chris Carrizales has deep roots in Hamilton City. He’s faced the wrenching decision of whether to evacuate when the Sacramento River has overflown into his community — not once, but several times. He’s served on the board of the Hamilton City Fire Protection District and remains a board member for the Hamilton City Community Services District.
The past few years, he’s been laying down new roots — literally. As the Sacramento Valley field foreman for River Partners, a Chico-based nonprofit that performs habitat restoration work across the state, Carrizales has supervised plantings constituting an environmental aspect of the levee project in his town.
This endeavor, formally called the Hamilton City Combined Ecosystem Restoration and Flood Damage Reduction Project, has resulted in a 6.8-mile setback levee and hundreds of acres of native habitat. It’s brought together a variety of agencies — federal, state and nongovernmental — in an unprecedented way with the potential to set precedents for future projects.
Farmers thought we were taking their land out of production to never be used again. Now they’ve realized they need more water — they’re having issues with their wells — and they’re seeing benefits of us restoring land just inside the levee, areas that were hard to insure and high risk to farm due to flooding.
Josh Waddell, River Partners Sacramento Valley Field Manager
